This week, in Strasbourg, there was a fine and frank denunciation of the European Union by Nigel Farage, British member of the European Parliament. Developments across the Atlantic mirror the same concentration of power—political and economic—we have seen in the…

In a small attempt to connect political theory to actual power, last week I sent messages to some GOP members of the U.S. Senate telling them about my new book, Politics on a Human Scale. (It might sound self-promoting…

The language of “human scale” politics originated, at least in modern America, among the New Left and the Counterculture. More recently it has been adopted by traditional conservatives (appropriately enough).

Dwight Macdonald was one of the twentieth century’s great public intellectuals.
American culture was Macdonald’s specialty, including government. A journalist by trade, Macdonald’s first professional job was writing for Time magazine. He later wrote for another Luce publication—Fortune—until…

Justice Scalia’s dissents in the two same-sex “marriage” cases are worth reading. The first opinion addresses the idea of judicial supremacy within the federal government—what Jefferson called “the despotism of an oligarchy”:
“This case is about power in several respects.…

When the New York Times reported that Governor Romney was facing pressure from the “Right” to name Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate, the flagship newspaper of the U.S. establishment meant the ersatz Right of neoconservatives, Rupert Murdoch,…

May 27 is the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Jesse Walker has brought an interesting tribute by Rick Perlstein to my attention. It’s a perceptive analysis, as far as it goes.
It’s not complete, though, because…